> Programming on our endless tech stack is meandering. And people come in all shapes, forms and level of expertise.

completely agree

> But as an experience developer now, I still rather prefer an open/loose platform to a one that sets me to certain very strict guidelines.

And that's also fine. It's just not what I think SO was trying to be. Reddit for those types of questions, HN for broader discussions and news, and SO for well-formed questions seems like a good state of things to me. (Not sure where discord fits in that)